Time to put on your best face!

We all want our portrait shots to look perfect but without hours spent editing. Rod Lawton checks out four programs designed to do just that

- Rod Lawton

Portrait enhancement was once done with lighting and makeup and darkroom retouching, and more recently with Photoshop and other photo editors. But today we have another set of tools at our disposal - Alpowered portrait enhancement software.

Portrait enhancement tools are extremely effective but potentially controversial too. On the one hand they can achieve digitally things that we previously had to manage with props and setups. On the other, they have reinforced ideas about 'beauty' that can be difficult to accept or live up to.

So, any discussion about portrait software comes with a caveat. The tools are out there, and they are very effective, but it's up to you to decide how far to take them.

Nevertheless, whether you're perfecting a wedding shoot, running a commercial portrait studio, illustrating an ad campaign, or producing portraits for friends and family, these programs can make your people shots look radiant.

Do you need face sculpting?

Face sculpting involves changing the shape of the face itself and even features like the eyes, nose, mouth and jaw. PortraitPro 23, seen here, can even add a subtle smile or compensate for the tilt angle of your subject's head, to a degree. These tools can be used to correct shooting errors or other oversights, but they can also, of course, be used to change your subject's appearance, which is where some photographers might draw the line.

Adaptive presets